Valve stopped developing Dota Underlords. The last patch arrived on 8 December 2021 and its headline note extended the Season 1 end date to 2031, which in practice means no further content or balance work. Servers stay online and matchmaking still fills, with SteamDB tracking roughly 1,000 to 1,300 concurrent players in August 2026 against an all-time peak of 202,334 on 23 June 2019, so what you are playing is a frozen 2021 auto-battler rather than a supported competitive game.
Starting Dota Underlords can feel overwhelming. This guide tells you exactly what to focus on during your first hours so you don't waste time on things that don't matter yet. For the full progression path, see our walkthrough.
What Kind of Game Is This?
Dota Underlords is a strategy game built around 8x8 board placement and three-copy hero upgrades. The core loop involves mastering these systems to progress through increasingly challenging content.
What to expect: Time investment in learning mechanics, experimentation, and gradual mastery. The game rewards patience and knowledge.
Choosing Your First Build
| Build | Beginner Rating | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Warrior Frontline | Excellent for beginners | Balanced approach |
| Assassin Burst | Excellent for beginners | Spread your own units into corners so enemy Assassins land badly, then let yours dive. If your opening jump fails twice in a row, pivot rather than reroll deeper into the same board. |
| Mage Magic Damage | Excellent for beginners | Balanced approach |
| Knight Defense | Excellent for beginners | Balanced approach |
| Hunter Scaling | Situational | Sit Hunters on the back two rows behind a real frontline and never let them be the closest target. Add Vladmir's Offering as soon as it appears in an item pick. |
Our recommendation: Start with Assassin Burst. Assassins jump the enemy back line at the start of combat and try to delete the carry before it acts. The comp wins or loses in the first two seconds of the round, which makes it high variance and very punishing against a spread board.
Avoid Hunter Scaling as your first pick. Hunters convert a long round into steady ranged damage, so the comp beats anything that fails to kill quickly. Once you're ready, check our classes guide for all options.
First Session Step-by-Step
Step 1: Learn 8x8 board placement
You arrange purchased heroes on an 8x8 grid during a preparation phase, then the round resolves automatically with no further input. Where a unit stands decides who it walks into first, which matters more than most new players expect.
This is the foundation. Spend your first 15-30 minutes getting comfortable with how 8x8 board placement works before worrying about anything else. Our combat guide breaks this down further.
Step 2: Head to Standard
The main eight-player mode, where everyone starts at 100 health and the last player standing wins. Rounds alternate between player-versus-player fights and creep rounds that hand out item picks.
Clear the main content here before moving on. Everything teaches fundamentals you'll need later. See our maps guide for all locations.
Step 3: Get Your First Upgrade
Look for Vladmir's Offering: it's the most accessible early upgrade. Tier five aura item that raises damage across your team rather than one unit. In a board built on many small attackers it outperforms any single-target damage item.
Step 4: Understand three-copy hero upgrades
Three copies of the same hero merge into a two-star version, and three two-stars merge again into a three-star. Chasing a three-star costs nine copies of a unit that other players are also buying from a shared pool.
This is the system most new players overlook. Invest time here early. It pays off throughout the entire game.
Step 5: Push to Knockout
A shortened format that compresses the same eight-player structure into a faster match. Economy matters less because there are fewer rounds to compound interest across.
Essential Mechanics Explained
8x8 board placement
You arrange purchased heroes on an 8x8 grid during a preparation phase, then the round resolves automatically with no further input. Where a unit stands decides who it walks into first, which matters more than most new players expect.
three-copy hero upgrades
Three copies of the same hero merge into a two-star version, and three two-stars merge again into a three-star. Chasing a three-star costs nine copies of a unit that other players are also buying from a shared pool.
alliance bonuses
Fielding several heroes from the same alliance grants a shared bonus that scales in steps, so three Warriors give the whole team armor. The Warrior alliance is widely rated the strongest defensive package in the game precisely because a three-stack is cheap.
gold interest and streaks
You bank interest of one gold per ten held, capped at five per round, and win or loss streaks pay their own bonus on top. Deciding whether to spend on rerolls or hold for interest is the entire economic layer.
Underlord pick at round 10
At round 10 you choose one of four Underlords, Anessix, Hobgen, Jull or Enno, and each is offered in one of two randomly selected builds. The Underlord fights on your board for the rest of the match, so the pick changes both your damage profile and your alliance count.
Common Beginner Mistakes
1. Following a 2019 or 2020 tier list without checking it predates the final December 2021 balance state
This is a common trap that costs new players significant time.
2. Rerolling the shop every round and arriving at round 20 with no interest and a two-star board
This is a common trap that costs new players significant time.
3. Stacking every damage unit in one corner where a single area ability hits all of them
This is a common trap that costs new players significant time.
4. Picking an Underlord for its ability description without checking which of its two builds was offered
This is a common trap that costs new players significant time.
5. Queuing Duos solo during off-peak hours and blaming the game for a wait that a four-figure population cannot fix
This is a common trap that costs new players significant time.
First 5 Hours Checklist
- Understand 8x8 board placement and three-copy hero upgrades
- Choose Assassin Burst as starting build
- Clear Standard main content
- Acquire Vladmir's Offering or equivalent upgrade
- Reach Knockout
- Know what you are signing up for before you install. The 8 December 2021 patch pushed Season 1 to 2031 and no balance changes have followed, so every comp you read about in a 2020 guide is still exactly as strong or weak as it was then. That stability is genuinely useful for learning, but there is no meta to keep up with.
- Bank to ten gold as fast as you can. Interest pays one gold per ten held up to a five gold cap, so the difference between sitting at nine and sitting at fifty compounds over a 30-round match into more heroes than any single lucky reroll gives you.
Tips for New Players
- Know what you are signing up for before you install. The 8 December 2021 patch pushed Season 1 to 2031 and no balance changes have followed, so every comp you read about in a 2020 guide is still exactly as strong or weak as it was then. That stability is genuinely useful for learning, but there is no meta to keep up with.
- Bank to ten gold as fast as you can. Interest pays one gold per ten held up to a five gold cap, so the difference between sitting at nine and sitting at fifty compounds over a 30-round match into more heroes than any single lucky reroll gives you.
- Three Warriors is the cheapest stable opening in the game because the alliance grants armor to the entire team, not just to the Warriors. Even if you intend to finish on Mages, Warriors buy you the early rounds without spending on rerolls.
- Positioning beats board strength against Assassins. They jump the back line at combat start, so putting your carry in a corner surrounded by two bodies means the jump lands into your frontline instead of onto your damage dealer.
- Take the Underlord that patches a hole rather than the one with the best animation. Anessix summons an extra Demon that counts toward that alliance, Jull is a melee tank, Hobgen sets targets on fire for a percentage of maximum health per second, and Enno leaps around poisoning the back line. Each appears in one of two builds chosen at random, so read the offered build, not just the name.
- Do not chase a three-star hero unless you already hold six copies. Nine copies come out of a pool every other player is drawing from, and the gold you burn rerolling for the last three usually buys a stronger two-star board instead.
- Break your economy deliberately, not accidentally. If you are on a losing streak and below roughly 40 health, spend down to buy survivability now, because interest you never live to collect is worth nothing.
- Blade Mail on the unit the enemy focuses first turns their carry into a liability, since it reflects 30 percent of incoming damage. It is one of the few defensive picks that punishes a stronger opponent rather than merely delaying them.
- Play City Crawl if the queue is empty. It is offline campaign content built before development stopped, so it plays exactly as designed regardless of how many people are online, and it teaches board reading better than losing eighth place repeatedly.
- Expect no cross-platform rescue. The game shipped on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS in February 2020 and the mobile clients are as unmaintained as the PC one, so the combined pool is still small.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Dota Underlords still playable in 2026?
Yes, though it is unsupported. Servers are up and matches fill, with SteamDB showing roughly 1,000 to 1,300 concurrent players in August 2026. Valve last patched it on 8 December 2021 and that patch extended Season 1 to 2031, which is how the studio signalled that content work had ended.
Did Valve officially cancel it?
There was no formal cancellation announcement. Development simply stopped after 2021, and coverage at the time read the Season 1 extension as the end of updates. The game remains free on Steam and has never been delisted.
How is it different from Dota 2?
It is an auto-battler, not a MOBA. You buy heroes into an 8x8 board during a preparation phase and rounds resolve without direct control. It grew out of the Dota Auto Chess mod, which reached seven million players by April 2019, and it was the first mobile game built on Valve's Source 2 engine.
Is Teamfight Tactics just a better version of this?
That is roughly what the market decided. Riot's competing auto-battler kept shipping seasons and sets while Underlords stopped, and commentary at the time pointed to it as the main reason the player base left. If you want an actively balanced auto-battler, Underlords is not it.
Can I still learn the game solo?
Yes. City Crawl provides offline campaign challenges that do not need other players, and a frozen balance state means anything you learn stays true. Ranked still functions, but the small pool makes match quality inconsistent.
More Dota Underlords Guides
- Dota Underlords Dota Underlords Overview
- Dota Underlords Best Builds
- Dota Underlords Tier List
- Dota Underlords Walkthrough
- Dota Underlords Tips & Tricks
- Dota Underlords Weapons Guide
- Dota Underlords Combat Guide
- Dota Underlords Boss Guide
- Dota Underlords Maps & Locations
- Dota Underlords Crafting Guide
- Dota Underlords Classes & Characters
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